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Dear Friend, Subscriber, and Category Pirate,
Last week, we published The $100 Book as our public declaration that books have been underpriced for three decades.
This week, we’re showing you the math that proves it.
Every link in the publishing value chain is designed to keep the author small while everyone else compounds.
When Pirate Eddie built a full P&L of the publishing business—from list price to the author’s royalty check—what he uncovered was worse than we expected.
(Watch him walk through the full model in the 14-minute breakdown video above.)
This post explains the video. But we’ve also included an interactive P&L worksheet with AI prompts at the end. You can use this with the Pirate Eddie Bot (or any AI tool) to run your own version of the math.
Let’s dive in.
Scenario 1: Traditional Publisher
In Scenario 1, Eddie explains the math behind a traditional publisher.
A hardcover book sells for $25.
Amazon and retailers keep roughly half.
Printing costs another $6.
That leaves the publisher with $6.50 in profit, or a 52 percent margin.
The author earns 10-15 percent of the list price, which means $2.50 per book. That’s the same check authors earned in the 1990s, when gas cost $1.15 a gallon.
The math hasn’t changed because the mindset hasn’t changed.
Scenario 2: The Self-Publishing Illusion
Self-publishing a book gives you more freedom, but it’s not all upside.
